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Inspiration from Computer Games
Over 14 years before I started developing Settletopia (around 2009–2015), I was already a huge fan of factory-building, sandbox survival, and colony management games.
Back then, I had a low-performance computer and a slow internet connection. Modern shooters and online games were out of the question — they lagged too much. Instead, I spent hours playing games like SimCity, OpenTTD, Warcraft 3, and Age of Empires.
I was fascinated by the idea of building and managing large cities, enterprises, and vast railroad networks. Watching my creations grow and function as complex systems sparked my love for strategy and simulation games.
Minecraft
When Minecraft Classic became popular and the Minecraft Alpha was released, I was immediately hooked, especially by redstone. I learned binary counting system using it, and I spent hours building Redstone contraptions.
As the modding community grew, factory-building mods like IndustrialCraft and BuildCraft gained popularity. I played in modded server, developing my own factory, though sadly, my factory was raided.
When the ComputerCraft was introduced, I took it a step further. I wrote programs to control multiple turtles (robots) that roamed the world, mining resources and even growing forests.
It was fun, I even co-hosted a public Minecraft server with my friends for a year, where I introduced factory-building plugins.
It was this deep fascination with factory-building and automation that led me to search for more games with similar mechanics. That’s when I found Factorio during its early development.
Factorio
This game allowed me to build factories and automate stuff like never before, factory must grow. I followed the game’s development progress, reading the development updates (Friday posts), and was amazed by its improvements over the years.
The real surprise came when they added multiplayer support, allowing one server to host hundreds of players while other games could handle only tens of players at their best.
Colony simulation games (Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, Prison Architect, Gnomaria)
At the same time I discovered games like Prison Architect, Gnomoria, and RimWorld, where instead of factories, you manage limited territory and the needs of villagers. I was fascinated by the autonomy of game creatures — how they decide when to eat, work, or rest. I always wanted to understand how such systems were created.
I even imagined idea of colony game with auto turrets, and then I found out that RimWorld exists, where I could build fortresses and defend against raiders.
I also played Dwarf Fortress, I set up graphics mods just to understand the game. It’s a true treasure of a world, and I spent hours building my fortresses.
The dilemma
While these games were enjoyable, I felt limited and sometimes lost immersion. In colony management, I always had to stay at the center of the map to gain time to protect colony against enemy raids, breaking the immersion. Once my fortress grew, I couldn’t explore, send expeditions, or build outposts outside the small playable map region. I needed to rely on traders for unavailable resources, and sending expeditions only provides partial feedback about what is happening.
I wanted to experience the world with my colonists, set up outposts for better defenses and to gather missing resources, and chase fleeing enemies. I also longed to play these games with friends, but no colony management game offered multiplayer support. For years, I searched for a game with multiplayer but found nothing that truly met my expectations.
The idea
In early 2022, I had an idea to create my own colony-building game to solve these issues. Inspired by Factorio’s open world and multiplayer features, I believed it was possible to build a colony management game with open world and multiplayer support too.
I spent a year experimenting with GPU rendering, user interface creation, and thinking about game mechanics. Finally, in 2023, I committed to making my dream into reality.